Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) said that President Joe Biden’s scheme to boost electric vehicle sales would only make Americans more dependent on China for rare earth materials.
The New York Times reported that the Biden administration will outline aggressive automobile pollution limits that would require at least 54 percent of new vehicles sold in America to be electric by 2030.
Braun’s office said in a press release that Biden’s proposed emissions standards would attempt to make two-thirds of all new passenger cars and one-quarter of all trucks sold in America electric by 2032.
An electric vehicle charges at an EVgo fast charging station in Detroit on November 16, 2022. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)
Braun, who is running for governor in 2024, said in a written statement:
President Biden and his EPA are proposing unrealistic emissions standards to try to push the public further than they are willing to go. This plan is totally disconnected by the reality of our supply chain and energy infrastructure, and will result in the U.S. depending even more on China for raw rare earth minerals that the Biden administration doesn’t allow to be mined here. I ran a shipping and logistics business for 37 years, so I know this kind of overbearing government overreach will make everything more expensive.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), the Senate Republican Conference chairman, said Biden is trying to ban the “cars we drive.”
“The ‘electrification of everything’ is not a solution,” Barrasso explained.
He added, “It’s a road to higher prices and fewer choices.”
As Politico explained, there remain substantial hurdles to having a wide swathe of the American population primarily use electric vehicles:
The U.S. still doesn’t have nearly enough chargers for all the electric vehicles that the EPA wants to see on the highways. And many of the chargers that exist suffer from malfunctions, slow charging and other woes, as David Ferris recently documented for POLITICO’s E&E News.
Questions linger about whether the U.S. electric grid can stand up to the load of charging so many vehicles, and whether domestic manufacturing and mining can ramp up fast enough to make sure EVs are produced domestically.
Electric vehicles, including Tesla vehicles, have made headlines as electric vehicles have burst into flames.
